Suffolk Building Society Conveyancing Panel Information

Unlike the CML the Building Society Mortgage Instructions deal with this. Section A.12 states ‘In order to act on our behalf your firm or company must be a member of our conveyancing panel provided we are a society that operates one – see specific requirements for details of our arrangements. The Special Requirements state:

You must also comply with the terms and conditions of your Suffolk Building Society solicitor panel appointment.

If you are a solicitor and have a query relating to the Specific Requirements, you should make contact with Suffolk Building Society. The BSA will not advise or comment on specific queries relating to Suffolk Building Society or other lenders.

We only know of a couple of lenders that operate a separate approved solicitors panel where the mortgage advance is over a certain amount. You should nevertheless check directly with Suffolk Building Society. At one stage HSBC would only allow Sole practitioners to act for them where the mortgage was below £150,000. We are not sure if HSBC still operate such a condition. In your case it is best to check with Suffolk Building Society

We can't comment specifically on Suffolk Building Society. Many major lenders are now introducing ‘file auditing’ as standard practice in relation to completed matters. This raises questions of confidentiality in relation to the buyer client and the purpose to which the results of such audits will be put. The starting point is to remember that the file does not belong to your firm, it belongs to the ‘client’. But, of course, we will normally have two clients – the buyer and the lender - and you will owe a duty of confidentiality to each. So basically, you have to separate the file and just send the lender the parts solely relating to themselves. But, of course, as this will basically be correspondence with the lender, mortgage instructions etc.

Check with your Compliance Officer, but a firm should not send the complete conveyancing file without the borrower client’s express consent – and if he is in arrears with the lender he is hardly likely to agree. However, if the lender can establish a prima facie case of fraud, then you may be under an obligation to disclose the whole file.

The emerging convention is that lenders are including an authority to disclose in loan application forms to counter this problem. Mortgage Express v Sawali, 2010 EWHC 3054 (Ch) indicates that such provisions valid? Please click here for more information about that case.

The concern here is if you are expect to enter into ‘more onerous’ conditions that than the Handbook obligations.

You have to try and take an objective view as to whether the Terms relating to the Suffolk Building Society conveyancing appointment (or other terms for other lenders) are ‘more onerous’ than the BSA Mortgage Instructions. Depending on the Terms you may need to provide details on your renewal form. If you are in any doubt please call your broker to discuss before completing the answer.

With lenders and conveyancers working so closely together it is surprising that there has not been greater demand for the introduction of a bit of transparency regarding not just the figures for the Suffolk Building Society conveyancing panel but for all bank panel listings

BSA lenders do not come within the top 20 lenders in terms of frequency of questions. The most popular lender panels in terms of questions are as follows:

• Santander Conveyancing Panel
• National Westminster Bank Conveyancing Panel
• Royal Bank of Scotland Conveyancing Panel
• HSBC Conveyancing Panel
• Lloyds Conveyancing Panel